Update - Marlin city manager: Water treatment plant was not removing solid waste properly

[TexasTowelie]

As Marlin continues to contend with water issues, its city manager said Monday that solid waste hadn’t been properly removed from the water for years after city employees had dismantled the “clarifier” or chemical-cleansing process.

Marlin City Manager Ken Knight said filters did catch the sludge, however, making the water safe to drink.

Clarifiers treat wastewater with a chemical that binds solids together as a large propeller rotates through the tank to remove the sludge, Knight said. When operating correctly, a clarifier pushes relatively clean water through the filters, he said.

“Previous operators and previous employees of the city disabled most, if not all, of the automated features of that plant, in some cases cutting wires,” Knight said. “They also took certain pieces of the plant, like the clarifiers, offline. As far as we can tell, it hadn’t been turned on in six years, which was simply gross negligence by those operating it.”

This revelation from the city comes only days after residents suffered a six-day water outage from a “plume of sludge” that overwhelmed the filters and caused a system failure beginning Thanksgiving night.

Read more: http://www.wacotrib.com/news/environment/marlin-city-manager-water-treatment-plant-was-not-removing-solid/article_df80459f-ce3e-525d-9ffe-26887df29255.html

[kentauros]

2. While I understand that this part of the above story...

“Previous operators and previous employees of the city disabled most, if not all, of the automated features of that plant, in some cases cutting wires,” Knight said. “They also took certain pieces of the plant, like the clarifiers, offline. As far as we can tell, it hadn’t been turned on in six years, which was simply gross negligence by those operating it.”

...was likely caused by corruption and/or incompetence in the name of cost-cutting, it's still incomprehensible to me that it took place at all